Consumed by Consumerism....

Soooooo, let's see how much of the crap I bring will be completely and utterly useless once I'm there! It'll be interesting to see because I've definitely spent a load of time scouring the internet trying to find the "right" items. Most of which I know are probably unnecessary when I get them, but my thought process is always wants to try to be "as prepared as possible, just in case". In reality, I'm aware that the experience I'm delving into is not about the stuff I bring. And I know that I cannot fully "prepare in advance" for the experience I'm going to have and I definitely can't prepare for it by getting "stuff". Stuff won't help me do a good job (ok maybe it depends what stuff) and won't help me integrate into the community. Unless of course, it's stuff the community needs. You never know.....

But still.

The Little KoP

Source: China Daily

This here is a very important up-and-coming young lad...

Adorable tyke/prodigy child

I Will Be Gone in One Month.

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Got a New Skype Name...

Since me forgot me old one, I got a new Skype Name: missfaye25 . So add me if you have Skype and if you don't--Shame on you.

Learning to Speak Like A Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey...

So today en classe, I did French exercises with an old man. There's nothing wrong with that except once when he couldn't understand the correct way to do a sentence and la proffesseur tried to explain it, he muttered under his breath to me "And they wonder why the French lost the War!"

...

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He then added, "But don't tell her I said that!". Ahahahahaa, what a clever joke he came up with! "They wonder why the French lost the War!". Yup, that's the first time I've heard that one. Actually, that's the first time I've heard something that profoundly ignorant since the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Seriously, why is that whenever a small-minded ignoramous wants to make a joke about the Frenchies, the first and only thing they think of is "They lost to the Germans in WW2 until we came and saved their asses!!!1231111" "And tha Immigrants arre taken our jobbsss!! GaduRRrrr, Donna go an' bring me dat der shot gun, damn raccoons runnin' all 'round tha house."

Hey Old Man, which country is this?

Isn't it sad that you know so damn little about France that you try to come up with a stereotype to insult them with, but since you don't know anything you're forced to bring up an event from 65 years ago? How sad is that? There are so many stereotypes you could've come up with, but you're so ignorant you know none. Hahahahahaa, you old man.

O-M-GGGGGGG

UPDATE: Nope!! I was wrong! I went downstairs when my Dad informed me that this morning a wild gang of about SEVEN squirrels took turns gangraping my feeder till there was no food left. He said, one squirrel climbed onto the feeder and shook it for at least an hour while the other six waited down below to eat the seeds that fell to the ground. I believe the squirrel on the feeder was Steve and he called those six hooligans over to our backyard and showed them the feeder in order to gain status in squirrel-land. My question to my Dad was "So you sat here and watched as a gang of squirrels viciously shook and emptied out my bird feeder till there was none left and didn't do anything. Just sat and watched them for an hour like 'Hmm. That was interesting.'" RAWWWWWRRRR!!!!!!!

Who the hell new bird feeder maintenance was such an arduous task?? I took a glance at my main feeder yesterday and noticed it was half full even though I filled it to the brim only a week ago. It should take maybe a month for it to be half gone. My first thought was "STEVE!!" But even Steve doesn't eat that much. My bird feeder has been getting tons of traffic recently from many different species of birds from Blue Jays to strange spotted birds I can't identify. But they eat like a few seeds at a time. So who ate all those seeds?

I went out there and underneath the feeder I spotted deer droppings. How do I know they were deer droppings? There are only so many animals in this neighborhood so it was either deer or fox droppings and a fox couldn't reach my feeder. But a deer could. They are tall enough. "But deer don't eat bird food, Ashley!!" I thought. So I brought the feeder in yesterday and then said "Whatever's eating it probably eats at night so it's not fair to bring the feeder in during the day when the birds eat" And I brought it back out there and waited.

Today, when I woke up, all the food was gone.

Now all the birds are out there flying to the feeder and flying away because there's no food left for them. The culprits of course are the neighborhood deer! Ugh I have a new foe now!!!

I Found A Grey Hair.

I'm about to go to my first French class in a few years in about 30 minutes. It will be every Tuesday from 7:15 to 9:15 I believe. This means it will cut into LOST. There's nothing I can do about this. I'll just have to watch the last month of LOST online. I will probably go to class and try not to talk much. This is because think this is like intermediate conversation. Like people here might be decent speakers. I don't know, but I haven't even reviewed and I passed up many opportunities to get/use Rosetta Stone and/or learn to speak French in some other way. The official language of Burkina Faso is French, BTW. I'll talk more about this stuff when I get back.

In other news, I found a grey hair the other day. It's very short, but it's near the front of my head. I tried to be very accepting of it. I think people can look very cool with grey hair. But my mom has only a small patch of grey hair near the front of her head, that's it. And she's 62. So why do I have one at 22? I wasn't expecting to see a single grey hair for many many years. So I googled "I found a grey hair" and it turns out many people have found a grey hair at my age or younger and it can be a sign of stress. I don't understand how my life is more stressful than the average person's though. I understand that I worry a lot and have anxiety about a great many things, but still I say I believe my life is significantly less stressful than let's say the average person with kids. And if I'm this stressed at 22 with no kids, maybe having kids isn't for me. I mean come on seriously.

Will update when I get back.

UPDATE: Okay, so yeah I went to French class last night and all in all it was a pretty solid class. It's mostly old people of course and one ambitious high school sophomore. I did not study at all going into this class, I just kind of showed up. And stuff started coming back to me which I was happy about and I learned some new things. Yay. However, I am still on my ROSETTA STONE QUEST to find a FRENCH ROSETTA STONE. Big ups to you if you can get one for me. I'm glad to be getting back into French because I was intimidated by it for a while, but there's really no reason to be. Everyone's just trying to learn it and we are all making mistakes.

On a very different note,

I want to go on a vacation. Before I leave. I'm serious. I've been thinking about this for a long time and I thought it would be a nice idea to go on a cheap cruise to like the Bahamas or somewhere. Ahhh. And I will be going.

Questions: Where should I go? Who should I go with? Who wants to go?